UNF Endowment Reports

Foundation proud to be a partner in The Jacksonville Commitment

The theme of this year’s Endowment Report is “meeting the need.” In my opinion, few programs better illustrate how UNF is accomplishing that goal than the recent establishment of The Jacksonville Commitment.

Earlier this year UNF President John Delaney spearheaded a drive to establish a scholarship program that makes a college education affordable to Duval County Public School students from low-income families. The UNF Foundation is proud to be a partner by securing a portion of the funding needed to make it a reality.

The Jacksonville Commitment is a community-wide initiative which includes UNF, Jacksonville University, Edward Waters College and Florida Community College at Jacksonville. The unprecedented cooperation among these institutions is an indication of the importance attached to the project.

No single program has more potential to reshape our community as does The Jacksonville Commitment. Higher education is one of the primary ways of battling chronic poverty, persistent cycles of unemployment and ruinous crime rates.

I am grateful to the individuals, corporations and the City of Jacksonville, all of whom have stepped up to make contributions to the future success of the program.

This report will profile one corporation which has responded to the call and made an investment in the program. I’m confident more such investments will follow.

As president of the UNF Foundation, I am proud to lend our financial support to this ambitious undertaking. Without a doubt the investment in The Jacksonville Commitment will pay dividends for future generations and make our community a better place in which to live.

Russell B. Newton III

President, UNF Foundation

2007-2008 Endowment Report 

The Power of Transformation evident at kickoff 

I recently attended the kickoff of the public phase of The Power of Transformation, the campaign for the University of North Florida. I was very impressed with the commitment of community leaders to lend their support to this important initiative.  

However, I was awestruck by the strength of the two students who told their stories to the nearly 400 donors in attendance. The student stories captured the potential of  UNF to change lives.  This ability to change or transform lives is why this campaign is so crucial at this time for the University, the City of Jacksonville and the entire region.

The challenging economic times we are facing have stressed the budgets of the University and our students.  Now more than ever it is important that scholarship assistance be available to make sure the promise of a college education can be extended to every qualified student in Duval County.  It is equally important that the University continue to offer transformational learning opportunities to every student who desires one.  Several of those transformational experiences are profiled in this publication.

Expanding scholarships and transformational learning opportunities are just two of  the  many campaign goals. The financial success of The Power of Transformation will in large measure determine the economic success of north Florida in the future.

I've been fortunate to have had a long involvement with the University, primarily through the UNF Foundation. I’m proud and honored to lead this dedicated group of civic leaders during this important time in the history of UNF.  I’m confident the endowments you read about in this publication will grow and multiply as the result of this campaign.  With that growth, we can transform our future and the future of our children. I invite everyone to join us in this most important undertaking.

Susan R. Ryzewic, President

UNF Foundation Board

Endowment Report 2008-2009 

Endowments critical to the community

The University of North Florida depends on fellowships to be able to offer the same type of transformational experiences for graduate students as we do for our undergraduates. Any vibrant, growing and economically strong metropolitan area depends on graduate programs to provide leaders of tomorrow.

While I’m gratified by the progress made, we have much more to do.  As many of you know the University is in the middle of an ambitions campaign to raise $110 million. The Power of Transformation is designed to make it possible to offer transformational learning experiences to generations of future students.

While our focus will always be offering quality undergraduate education, the University also has an important role to play in graduate education.  For example, many companies in our community depend on our graduate business and engineering programs to provide the highly skilled leaders capable of competing in the global marketplace. The region’s hospitals depend on our graduate nursing programs to provide outstanding health care workers who can handle rapidly changing technology while keeping the patient as their primary focus.  Our schools depend on our graduate teaching programs to meet the challenges of educating an increasingly diverse student population from varied economic and social backgrounds.

Fellowships are a key ingredient to make all these graduate programs successful. They are needed to recruit, educate and train top graduates in their field so Jacksonville can take its place among the nation’s first-tier cities.

This issue of the UNF Endowment Report focuses on the need for fellowships. Through personal stories, the publication illustrates how careers have been enhanced with graduate degrees and communities have benefited because we have been able to keep our most talented leaders here. Take a moment to read these profiles and you will understand why everyone in our community from the biggest corporations to the smallest business can benefit from a robust graduate program and the fellowships that make it possible

Endowment Report 2009-2010

Letter from the Foundation Board President

UNF Foundation donor funding enables the University to begin new programs and enhance existing ones far beyond what would be possible if we were to rely on state resources alone. One of the responsibilities of the UNF Foundation Board is to be diligent stewards of the resources with which we have been entrusted to achieve the maximum benefit from every dollar donated. We take this stewardship extremely seriously.

An essential component of stewardship is the regular review of: the best practices in the endowment management industry; the performance of the UNFF endowment; and the relationship with our outsourced Chief Investment Officer (CIO). Twelve months ago, as part of this ongoing “best practice,” we began the process by identifying and researching the approaches used by other endowments and by soliciting proposals from an extensive array of financial management firms. We collected information from more than 30 firms and through multiple rounds of due diligence, narrowed the field to four organizations that we believed could best serve the endowment needs of UNF Foundation. After face-to-face interviews, we selected two firms and conducted on-site visits. This process ultimately concluded when the Foundation’s Investment Committee recommended to the full board that we select a new firm, Perella Weinberg Partners, to be our outsourced CIO, with responsibility for overseeing the endowment investments, effective January 1, 2012. For more information about PWP you can go to its website www.pwpartners.com.

We are excited about the change in our outsourced CIO. There will not be a radical change in the way donated dollars are invested for the Foundation. It is more akin to a fine-tuning process that demonstrates UNF’s commitment to preserving the purchasing power of our donors’ endowments. The UNF Foundation board devoted its resources to this review process so that we can continue to build on our strong relationship with donors.

With the help of our donors, the quality of education at UNF continues to excel and provide transformational experiences for the students.

Thank you for entrusting us with your precious resources and for your continued faith in us.

Sincerely,
Susan R. Ryzewic

Endowment Report 2010-2011